[daip] Install questions

[Eric Greisen]

Craig Walker writes:
 > I am trying to install the 31DEC03 AIPS on my machine at home
 > and am running into problems.  I am on a Pentium IV with RedHat 9.
 > The default compiler for RedHat 9 is gcc/g77 version 3.2.2-5.
 > 
 > The AIPS web site indicates that the 3.2 compiler needs "changed
 > compiler options" to achieve reasonable performance.  But, despite
 > looking quite hard, I was unable to find out what those options should
 > be.  Would you please let me know what they are, and put that
 > information on the web site (or am I blind)?  Also, where do they need
 > to be set?

     I spoke to you about this in fact.  We still advertise that
2.95.3 is the best although I guess I am about to change that to say
that the others will do although they are slower.  It is OPT2="-O2"
rather than the mess now in $SYSLOCAL/FDEFAULT.SH.

 > 
 > I am running install.pl anyway, hoping to drop out before the actual
 > compiles.  I set /usr/bin/g77 as the fortran complier but did not
 > change any options, yet.  When it got to the stage of making XAS,
 > (starting compilations before I expected it to) it used
 > /usr/local/gcc-2.95.3/bin/bin/gcc for the C complier.  I have such a
 > compler left over from my RedHat 7.2 days, but I don't know if it
 > still works in my system so I was not planning to use it (I did make a
 > stab at reinstalling it, but configure did not recognize my HOST.  I
 > suppose it might be because my Linux is much newer than the downloaded
 > compiler.  This looked like a slippery slope so I decided not to go
 > that way.).  I did nothing to point to that compiler during this 
 > install.  It must have been remembered from the 31DEC02 install.  This
 > doesn't seem like the desired action.

    You did not change the Fortran linker and the C compiler from the
menu 11.

 > 
 > Earlier, when setting up the disks, it also seemed to have a very
 > dated memory.  The defaults it offered up were not what were in my
 > DADEVS etc, but what I had at the time of the 31DEC02 install, which
 > had changed since.  Again, I don't know where that information came
 > from.  More or less the same thing happened with printers - it 
 > remembered what I had at the last install, not what I now have in
 > PRDEVS.LIST.  Does all of this indicate that there is some file left
 > from the 31DED02 install that I should have deleted or renamed?  I
 > don't see such instructions.
 
       They are instructions on the web page for 31DEC03 and for
install.pl itself.  There is a file $HOME/.AIPSRC used to allow
restarts of install.pl which can be confusing if your "restart" is a
year later.

 > There was another oddity in FDEFAULT.SH which install.pl suggested
 > I check.  The first active line in the file is:
 > COMPILER="fort77"
 > Later that is overridden with:
 >       COMPILER=/usr/bin/g77
 > But it seems odd to have it there in the first place.

    If you are upset about left over code in aips then I suggest that
you hire us a couple of programmers and we will assign them to clean
up misc garbage.  Otherwise, I suspect you would prefer if I spent my
time working on more IFs in VPLOT.

 > 
 > I am confused by the LAPTOP environment variable in LOGIN.SH.
 > A YES indicates that it is for a portable computer.  But what distinguishes
 > a portable computer?  If it is the fact that it is not normally on the
 > net, that would also apply to my home machine.  What is it for?

    It is for laptops.  Your desktop is not a laptop - i.e. a portable
machine that changes names every time it run.

 > 
 > That's it for now.  I was hoping to install AIPS tonight, but I'll have
 > to wait for the compile options.  Also, I will need to recompile those
 > items that were done with 2.95, I think, for consistency.  Is there a
 > shortcut to doing that now that they have already been "done"?

No - you have to clean up.... Page 11 is very serious.

Eric Greisen